Thought of the Day 06.25.08

We’ve always known that referees make mistakes, but before television, debates about what actually happened on a sports play were essentially unsolvable. Nowadays, of course, we have instant replay, and we regularly discover that the ref got it wrong. But as a philosopher, I want to ask an odd question. Why don’t we ever say that the camera got it wrong?

Sounds silly, right? But it’s essentially an epistemology question. We assume cameras don’t make mistakes whereas human eyes do. In fact, we trust our eyes so little that we don’t even like to be dogmatic until after we’ve seen the replay. Our trust in cameras is not just total, it’s unquestionable. A ref who dared to challenge the camera would be laughed out of the profession, and even the referees have accepted that the role of the camera is to verify or correct their calls.

And whenever I hear people say that true science will always confirm the Bible, I want to caution them lest, in celebrating the times the camera supports the ref, they unwittingly embrace a system which sets up science as the infallible instant replay for the fallible Scriptures.